Website visitors counter backed with API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB – Lab 87

Services Covered

•  DynamoDB
•  Lambda
•  API Gateway

Lab description

In this lab I will create a backend of a website counter. It’ll be backed with DynamoDB table, Lambda function and calls made to API. When API call is made a Lambda fuction will increment the value in the table and return the latest value.

• Create a Lambda Function
• Create API Gateway
• Create DynamoDB Table
• Integrate API with Lambda function

Lab date

05-10-2021

Prerequisites

• AWS account
• Postman

Lab steps

1. Create a DynamoDB table, choose On Demand to lower the cost, but if you still are under free-tier choose Provisioned. Give your table a name and provide a Primary key. When table goes to Active status create a item in the table either programmaticly or through the console, the important part is that you provide your primary key and additional Attribute of type Number with some meaningful name for example visits. Set visits to 0.

   

2. Create a Lambda function, choose Python as runtime engine. Create a new role for the function, it’ll need the basic Lambda execution role and additional permissions to access DynamoDB table:

   {
      "Version": "2012-10-17",
      "Statement": [
          {
              "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
              "Effect": "Allow",
              "Action": [
                  "dynamodb:PutItem",
                  "dynamodb:GetItem",
                  "dynamodb:Query",
                  "dynamodb:UpdateItem"
              ],
              "Resource": "<DYNAMODB_ARN>"
          }
      ]
   }

   As a safety measure create Environment variable for you database name under the Configuration tab.

   

   The following code will increment the visits attribute each time the function is invoked and return the latest value. It includes the HTTP headers for the API calls.

   import boto3
   import os
   import json
   from boto3.dynamodb.conditions import Key
   
   ddbName = os.environ["dbName"] // get table name from Environment Variables
   
   dynamodb = boto3.resource('dynamodb')
   table = dynamodb.Table(ddbName) 
   
   // returns the latest value
   def get_count():
      response = table.query(
          KeyConditionExpression=Key('id').eq('site')
          )
      count = response['Items'][0]['visits']
      return count
   
   // increment the visits value
   def lambda_handler(event, context):
      response = table.update_item(     
          Key={        
              'id': 'site',
              'hits': 0
          },   
          UpdateExpression='ADD ' + 'visits' + ' :incr',
          ExpressionAttributeValues={        
              ':incr': 1   
          },    
          ReturnValues="UPDATED_NEW"
      )
   
   // Headers for API calls
      return {
          'statusCode': 200,
          'headers': {
              'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': '*',
              'Access-Control-Allow-Headers': 'Content-Type,X-Amz-Date,Authorization,X-Api-Key,X-Amz-Security-Token',
              'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials': 'true',
              'Content-Type': 'application/json'
          },
          'body': get_count()
      }
   

   Go ahead and test the function and check if the visits attribute gets changed.

3. Create an API Gateway, choose REST API. Create new POST method with Lambda function Integration type, choose the earlier created function. Then test it and check if the DynamoDB table have been updated.
4. Deploy the API. From Actions drop-down menu click on Deploy API. You will see the Invoke URL, you can copy it and test it with a tool like Postman. There’s not much going on there yet, but the API responds with the latest value:

   

   The response is obviously in line with the item value in the table:

   

   I will include this on my website in upcoming lab.

   Lab files

Acknowledgements